Forem: Quine

We measured maintainer response time in Issues and PRs for 90k GitHub repos

Quine — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 16:33:56 +0000

Writing an open-source contribution is difficult and time-consuming, but so is reviewing it and maintaining it. For this reason, contributing to open source is a two-sided investment decision. On the one hand, contributors invest their time and energy writing high-quality code and understanding how their submission fits in the storyline of the repo. On the other hand, maintainers allocate time and attention to review the PR and tacitly make a long-term commitment to look after the wellbeing of the contribution. When a PR is finally merged, the time and effort that was put into writing and reviewing it converts into exponential value for the authors, the reviewers, and the ecosystem!

Unfortunately, contributor stories does not always end in happy merges. The open source ecosystem is flooded with abandoned open issues and neglected pull-requests, which speaks about fundamental mismatches between repo's communities and aspiring contributors. We at Quine think this is mainly a data problem.

Would you invest time opening an issue if you knew the repo is abandoned? Is your community more unresponsive that the "other" competing repo?

To address these information asymmetries we built repo detail page, a statistical dashboard that helps contributors and maintainers understand the health of a repository at the community level. To start with, we created a response time graph that measures the (median) time it takes maintainers to respond to issues, and the time it takes for pull requests to be merged after being initially submitted. Your time is valuable, but so is the time of maintainers. Understanding the activity and responsiveness of the community you aspire to join can help you make an informed decision on where to invest your time and energy. For maintainers, the response time graph can help understand the internal dynamics of their community and provide a better contributor experience 🙂

Response time graphs are already available for the 90,000 most popular open source repositories on Github. To access them, signup here!

Quine's just getting started ✨ Follow us on Twitter or join our Discord server if you want to be in the loop!

Find the best repos to contribute to in #hacktoberfest

Quine — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 18:40:18 +0000

Contributing to open source is difficult. Ironically, it's particularly difficult during #hacktoberfest. Why? Most of the issues in the open source network are solved by programmers that already know the codebase where those issues live. Hacktoberfest flips the script and makes it cool to scavenge the open source network hunting for easy issues to solve. The problem? The open source network is vast and disorganised, so finding the communities (and issues!) that align with your skills and interests is extremely difficult.

At Quine we believe that contributing to open source is the best way to level up as a developer, so Hacktoberfest should be celebrated all year round! That is why we are building Scout, a platform that allows you to easily find projects to contribute to, add to your stack, or simply enjoy! Our powerful ML engine will crunch your Github metadata to provide you the issues that best align with your interests - all through a fresh, simplified, and personalised interface!

🎟 Quine is still in closed beta, but we're giving out 100 beta-tester invites this month! To snap one, go here and use the access code hacktoberfest2021

More stuff is coming soon, follow us on Twitter for updates 🐦

GitNFTs: Autograph and sell your GitHub commits as NFTs ✨

Quine — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 14:48:46 +0000

We just released GitNFT (https://gitnft.quine.sh/) a platform that allows developers to autograph and mint NFTs of their GitHub commits and sell them in the OpenSea marketplace “as art”. Commits can store substantial collector value, either for their historical significance, the coolness/beauty of the code, or the popularity of the author. GitNFT lets both contributors and NFT collectors build upside from that value! 🔮

The world’s digital infrastructure feeds on Open-Source, yet the economic value it generates does not always back-propagate to its creators. GitNFT is a new monetisation mechanism that aims to make Open-Source work economically sustainable ❤️

Please check it out!